August 17, 2017 — Fiasco. Disaster. Nightmare. These are words used by those involved with the floating processor Akutan to describe a fishing season gone terribly wrong. The Akutan, owned by Klawock Oceanside, Inc., was supposed to custom process up to 100,000 pounds of Bristol Bay salmon a day for a small fleet of fishermen under the banner Bristol Bay Seafoods, LLC. After July 25, it was bound for the Kuskokwim to give local fishermen their only salmon market.

Nothing went right. The owners, the fishing fleet, the lender, and the crew have gone unpaid or lost big sums of money. Onboard the vessel sits 130,000 pounds of headed-and-gutted sockeye salmon, the only bounty other than the vessel itself that may eventually compensate the parties involved. The owners, fishermen, and other parties filed liens against that fish as the 180-foot floating processor Akutan and a skeleton crew limped out of the silty, shallow Nushagak Bay Sunday to seek repairs at a blue water port.

“We’re in peril,” Captain Steve Lecklitner said Saturday. “We know we cannot stay in this river. It’s breaking down our systems. The owners have basically abandoned the vessel. The mortgage holders and the lenders have not established contact. I’m trying to get parts for our generator, and as soon as that’s done, it’s our intention to move the vessel to Dutch Harbor.”

Best laid plans

After last season a group of about 15 Bristol Bay drift boat fishermen decided to again pursue their own market. These fishing families are members of an Old Believer community in Homer and are commonly, and not pejoratively, referred to as the “Russians” in Bristol Bay’s fleet.

Skipper Kiril Basargin, a leader of this group, has been vocal about his frustration with the “mega corporate seafood buyers” that process 99 percent of Bristol Bay’s catch, faulting them for catch limits and low prices. In 2015 he brought his concerns to the state’s board of fisheries, telling them that Bristol Bay’s seafood companies promise “every year that they are going to keep up, and not holding there [sic] promises. Holding on, the commercial fisherman loses money every minute while they sit. We finally got tired of sitting and losing our seasons. The huge corporations control the markets and commercial fisherman. Finally in Bristol Bay in 2014 Wild Legacy Seafoods was born,” he wrote.

What happened to Wild Legacy Seafoods is unclear. But ahead of the 2017 season, Basargin and others formed a new company, Bristol Bay Seafoods LLC, to be their own “buyer”. They hired Klawock Oceanside to be their processor.

“And really they’ve lost their whole season to mismanagement and mis-operation of the F/V Akutan,” said William Earnhart, an attorney for the Bristol Bay Seafoods fishermen.

A. Fish: Some people love eating it, and some people do not. But its health benefits are something that everyone can agree on.

“Studies show that increasing your fish intake is good for you, especially for your heart,” said Jane DeWitt, clinical nutrition coordinator of Food and Nutrition Services for Hackettstown Medical Center. “It’s leaner than red meat and some, like salmon, arctic char and sardines, are full of omega-3 fatty acids, which are great for your heart.”

Omega-3 fatty acids, which are essential fatty acids for human health, can help reduce inflammation as well as the risk for heart disease, notes DeWitt. The American Heart Association recommends up to two servings of fish per week, up to 8 ounces total. Omega 3 fatty acids are also beneficial for brain health as well help with memory, performance, and cognition.

August 3, 2017 — Congressional appropriation committees are considering whether to provide millions of dollars in disaster relief funds to West Coast fishing fleets as part of the 2018 federal budget.

The amount of funding being considered has ranged from $20 million recommended by the House Appropriations Committee to a failed proposal to allocate $150 million to fishermen, according to officials following the proceedings.

California 2nd District Rep. Jared Huffman (D-San Rafael) said last week that the $20 million proposed won’t make up for the financial losses experienced by the nine declared West Coast fishery disasters in Alaska, California and Washington. The disaster declaration made in January by then-U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker includes California’s Dungeness and rock crab fishery as well as the Yurok Tribe’s Klamath River Chinook salmon fishery.

“But it’s better than nothing and we’ll keep working on it,” Huffman said of the $20 million proposal. “… We’ll have to take a look at just how inadequate whatever comes out of Congress is. If it’s woefully inadequate to meet the needs, we may need to work on supplemental disaster relief. The Senate will have a say in this, too. I think you can look at it as good news that there is some money in the House bill.”

Huffman and other West Coast representatives had introduced a bill last year that called on Congress to appropriate $130 million to aid the West Coast fleets.

Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations Executive Director Noah Oppenheim said Wednesday that there were hopeful signs during the Senate Appropriations Committee budget review in July that the Senate would support disaster relief funds.

Oppenheim said Sens. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) in particular advocated for an amendment to the Senate committee’s 2018 budget recommendation that would have added $150 million in relief for the fleets. But Oppenheim said Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) did not support the amendment, and it did not make it into the final recommendations.

July 18, 2017 — Preliminary harvest data show the catch in Alaska’s wild salmon fisheries is nearing the 48 million fish mark. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game’s (ASF&G) count includes 31.6 million sockeyes, 8.4 million chums, 7.6 million pinks, 198,000 silvers and 193,000 Chinook salmon.

More than 25 million of those sockeyes were caught in the Bristol Bay fishery, including 9.6 million in the Nushagak district, 8 million in the Egegik district, in excess of 4 million in the Naknek-Kvichak district and 2.2 million in the Ugashik district.

State fisheries biologist Tim Sands, Dillingham, Alaska, described the sockeye fishery in the Nushagak district as “gangbusters,” as fishermen there brought in a record 1.2 million salmon on July 3. It was the second time this year, and in the history of the Nushagak district, that the daily sockeye salmon harvest exceeded one million reds, Sands said.

Processors on the Lower Yukon have taken deliver of some 331,000 oil rich keta salmon, and another 66,000 keta salmon were caught on the Upper Yukon.

Processors in Prince William Sound have received 7.9 million fish, including 482,000 Copper River reds and another 417,000 sockeyes from the Eshamy District, 51,000 from the Coghill District, 33,000 from the PWS general seine fishery, 2,000 from the Bering River drift and 1,000 from the Unakwik District drift fisheries.

July 2, 2017 — The federal government is starting a five-year review of the Gulf of Maine’s population of Atlantic salmon, which are listed as endangered under the Endangered Species Act.

Atlantic salmon were once plentiful off New England, but dams, loss of habitat, pollution and overfishing dramatically reduced the population. The National Marine Fisheries Service says it is reviewing the health of the stock to get more updated information on its current status.

The fisheries service says the review will be based on scientific and commercial data. One group, the New Brunswick, Canada-based Atlantic Salmon Federation, says recent data are troubling. The group says total estimated returns of the fish to North America in 2016 showed a 27 percent decrease from the previous year.

Known as pyrosomes, they are tubular colonies of hundreds or thousands of tiny individual creatures called zooids, enmeshed together in a gelatinous tunic roughly the consistency of gummy bear candy.

No relation to jellyfish, they resemble bumpy, opaque pickles in the water, typically a few centimeters or inches long, though some grow 1 or 2 feet (30cm or 60cm) in length.

They feed by filtering microscopic algae, or phytoplankton, as they float with the current, and are known to glow in the dark – a bioluminescent characteristic that gives the organism its scientific name — Pyrosoma, Greek for “fire body.”

Pyrosomes have rarely if ever been seen along the U.S. West Coast until 2012, when first spotted in California waters. Since then, they have gradually multiplied and spread north, before exploding in numbers this spring, according to scientists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Although harmless to humans, they have been especially troublesome to the commercial salmon catch in Oregon, with large globs of the rubbery critters clogging fishing gear by the thousands in recent months. Some have even washed ashore.

“It gets to a point where they’re so abundant, you can’t even fish out there, so you have to pick up your gear and move elsewhere,” Nancy Fitzpatrick, executive director of the Oregon Salmon Commission, said on Monday.

A single five-minute trawl with a research net by scientists off the Columbia River in late May scooped up roughly 60,000 pyrosomes, NOAA reported.

Fishermen were also hit in southeastern Alaska, where some crews suspended operations earlier this year when pyrosome densities were at their height, said Aaron Baldwin, a fishery biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

On a bright June evening, a group of people who care passionately about the plight of Atlantic salmon gathered at the Veazie Salmon Club on the banks of the Penobscot River.

Researchers, academics, fisheries managers, non-governmental organizations, and members of the local salmon club came together to recognize the hard work that has gone into restoring the Penobscot River’s habitat for sea-run fish. The Penobscot River Restoration Project removed two dams and improved passage around two others. As a result, critically endangered Atlantic salmon, as well as river herring, shad, American eel, and other sea-run fish have improved access to hundreds of miles of their historic habitat.

“Rivers like the Penobscot are where we make fish. Sea-run fish are indicators of the health of our estuaries, our groundfish stocks, and our communities,” said John Bullard, regional administrator for NOAA Fisheries Greater Atlantic Region, who was there to present the awards. “It’s amazing to hear about the signs of ecosystem recovery that we are seeing. While we haven’t seen strong returns of Atlantic salmon yet, the results of the restoration project for other sea-run fish are encouraging. To go from fewer than 3,000 river herring in 2013 to more than 1.2 million returns in 2016 is awe-inspiring.”

The evening’s festivities included recognition of the efforts of two individuals, Claude Westfall and Andy Goode, who have been instrumental in helping to restore this population of endangered fish.

NOAA Fisheries is initiating a five-year review of the Gulf of Maine distinct population segment (DPS) of Atlantic Salmon, as required by the Endangered Species Act. The Gulf of Maine DPS of Atlantic salmon is listed as endangered by NOAA Fisheries and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. NOAA Fisheries is taking the lead for this review.

In a five-year review, we evaluate the best scientific and commercial data available to review the current status of listed species. We use these reviews to ensure that listing classifications are accurate.

Through this announcement, we are requesting submission of information on the Gulf of Maine DPS of Atlantic salmon, including any information on the status, threats, and recovery of the species that has become available since the final listing determination in 2009.

Please submit your information by July 20, 2017, either through the e-Rulemaking portal or by mail to:

June 19, 2017 — The 2017 SeaWeb Seafood Summit, which took place 5 to 7 June in Seattle, Washington, U.S.A., brought together more than 580 global representatives of the seafood industry, the conservation community, academia, government, and the media for in-depth discussions, presentations and networking around the issue of sustainable seafood.

Here’s a review of the news that was made at this year’s summit:

A major topic of discussion at the conference was pre-competitive collaboration, with several panels and keynotes approaching the issues from different angles. In the pre-conference on Sunday, 4 June, attendees heard from Nira Desai, the director of strategy and learning for the World Cocoa, a key player in the development of CocoaAction, a sustainability movement in the cocoa industry:

In other big news for aquaculture, on Monday, 5 June, Seafood Watch upgraded farmed salmon certified by the Aquaculture Stewardship Council to its “Good Alternative” rating, marked “a watershed moment for the sustainability credentials of farmed salmon”:

June 12, 2017 — Want a fishing license to crew on a salmon boat this summer? Got friends or family visiting who want to wet a line for a prized Alaska catch? Don’t count on it.

If the Alaska legislature continues to defy its constitutional obligation to pass a budget, those opportunities will be lost because there won’t be any state workers to issue fishing licenses. Layoff notices went out on June 1 to thousands of state employees who will be off the job at the July 1 start of the fiscal year.

That’s just one of the lesser impacts of the legislative impasse, hundreds of which are now being outlined by the governor and state agencies as the deadline approaches.

Here’s an overview of potential fishery related impacts from various divisions:

The Commercial Fisheries Division, which receives nearly all its management money from the state general fund, will be hit the hardest. The budget deadlock would bring all state fisheries to a screeching halt, and thousands of processing workers who live in or come to Alaska each summer would suddenly find themselves out of a job.

The biggest punch, of course, would be felt by the salmon fisheries — and the harm could extend well beyond this year.

Field staff at remote weirs, towers and salmon sonar counting projects from Southeast to Kotzebue will be pulled, said Scott Kelley, division director with the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game.

“A ballpark count is 40-50 projects for commercial fisheries. That doesn’t include projects operated by Sport Fish which are oftentimes equally important for overall salmon assessment, as well as aerial and foot surveys,” he said.

The stall means that managers’ ability to forecast future salmon escapement goals and collect other critical data also would be significantly compromised.

Cancelled harvests also could force too many salmon to head upstream and exceed the carrying capacity of food and oxygen in their home lakes or streams.

“That entirely depends on the strength of a given run,” Kelley explained. “In rearing limited systems, where the more spawners we put in the more fry we get, we could see significant impacts in terms of future yields. If we put a big number of sockeye into a system above the upper end of an escapement goal, the result could be reduced yield when that brood year returns over 3 to 5 years. If there are more fry than feed, they could have reduced in-lake survival, reduced marine survival because they leave freshwater smaller and less fit than normal. Prey densities also take a hit and take a while to recover.”